by Thinus Ferreira
The Cape Town businessman and father of three Shawn Godfrey (34) lifted the MasterChef SA 2022 trophy above his head in the finale of the fourth season of the cooking reality show MasterChef South Africa on M-Net (DStv 101) on Thursday night after he faced off in a last main-and-dessert cooking challenge against fellow Capetonian Andriette de la Harpe.
The fourth season, produced by Homebrew Films and done at Maker's Landing at Cape Town's V&A Waterfront, concluded in a tense supersized final episode on Thursday night in which Andriette de la Harpe first had to face off in a cook-off against the Cape Town senior researcher Tarryn de Kock, with Andriette who won.
For their final challenge, the judges tasked Shawn and Andriette to both "make a main and a dessert that will showcase your evolution from home cook to masterchef". For this, they got an open pantry and 2 hours in the kitchen.
Shawn plated a pork tenderloin and quail eggs in a bird's nest, consisting of crackling crumb, smoked apple puree, bacon, charred leek, and creme fraiche sauce, with a dessert of malva pudding with speculaas branches and lime zest.
Andriette went vegan and prepared butternut steak as her main course, with asparagus, red pepper sauce, ricotta and smoked Chimichurri. Her dessert was custard cake with lemon curd and meringue shards, with peppermint cream, fennel flowers and raspberries.
"I'm actually shocked," said Shawn. "If you put everything into something, and you just keep practising, learning, failing, and then improving, it can work."
He said "if I can just hand this over to my kids: be passionate about something, and if you're really passionate about something, put everything in that you can, focus, and just keep learning, keep getting up, keep going. You will get there."
Shawn who already has four businesses and 100 staff and is a serial entrepreneur with business ventures he had to keep going through the Covid-19lockdown and shutdowns, told TVwithThinus on Thursday that he wants to use his MasterChef SA 2022 win as a launchpad into his next business venture called The Roasted Dad, with his website at theroasteddad.com that is now live.
"Under that are two subcategories called Little Roast - it's children's cooking apparel like children aprons in leather, baby aprons, and then there are also the adult versions of it called Roasted. I'm looking to partner with a big retailer to launch that."
"The second part of my journey after the MasterChef SA win is to start a pop-up restaurant that will repeat once a month for 4 nights, with chef Callan Austin who was on the show in episode 11 and chef Darren Badenhorst who owns Le Chêne and Le Coin Français."
"The three of us are coming together on 27 April for an exclusive pop-up restaurant which is for 24 people for 4 nights and 10 courses. The first one is in Cape Town but we're planning to also take it to Johannesburg and Durban."
Besides his plans to become a food influencer for corporates, Shawn is also planning to go on a 3-week road trip through South Africa soon with his family all the way through the Kalahari to Pilanesberg and to food-journal the whole trip for three weeks.
"There's a lot happening!" says Shawn.
